CK Councillor Voices Concerns About Foreign Trips

A Chatham-Kent councillor is having trouble seeing what good has come of the municipality's numerous foreign trips over the past several years.

An information report was presented at Monday night’s council meeting regarding the return on investment on the Municipality of Chatham-Kent’s foreign trips from 2011-2017.

Councillor Doug Sulman, who previously requested the report, says it was quite detailed and more information was given than in the past. However, he still has some concerns.

"There's concern about the money that was spent on the travels to try to get the fertilizer plant when the initial question should have been about zoning and can we do it... so I remain concerned about the money that was spent on that," he says.

According to the report from the municipality, a fertilizer production plant major opportunity pursued with a number of investor groups from China, Egypt, India, Canada, and the USA. Municipal staff partnered with Union Gas to pursue these Chinese prospects on two sales missions. The municipality says there were two assets that made Chatham-Kent attractive for this investment. One was Chatham-Kent’s geographic location and ready access to the US’s mid-west via rail. The second was the Dawn Hub, which provides transparent gas trading and a reliable supply of natural gas.

The municipality says three factors negatively impacted these plans:

1. There was a major drop in urea pricing in 2016 in the US market.
2. The community’s Official Plan needed to be amended to allow chemical production. This amendment/change required at least one year in terms of timing and an approximately $1-million investment from Chatham-Kent along with the support of the local property owners.
3. The property owners adjacent to the rail line indicated they were not prepared to sell their properties.

After considering these factors, administration decided that the $1-million investment would only be justified if there were firm commitments from an investor /producer and there was an interest from the property owners to sell their property.

Sulman says the other issue with the report is that its results can't be directly tied to the money that was spent.

"The only results we had that we heard about in the report were a school that hasn't been built yet and some jobs that aren't there yet and that's over a fairly lengthy period," he explains.

Sulman says council should really think about how it's investing the taxpayers' money. He says he's not opposed to investing the money in things that will bring jobs here, but there needs to be a clear return on investment.

"I think transparency is the way to go. Just tell us what you spent. People are realistic," he says. "They'll know that money has to be spent to try to do this stuff, but they want to know their money is being well spent."